Nuclear War and its Possible Consequences
Nuclear war has a profound impact that could split the course of human history in two. In the worst-case scenario, fires covering vast areas could wipe out millions of people within hours.
But the real catastrophe begins after that - nuclear war could trigger a nuclear winter, leading to the deaths of billions of people and perhaps the complete collapse of our civilization.
The Fire that Brings Winter
When a nuclear weapon explodes, a bubble of gas hotter than the sun is created and begins to burn everything around it. This "bubble of terror" expands rapidly above its target, creating a violent shock wave and causing massive destruction. In short, much is broken and set on fire.
The Firestorm that Consumes the Earth
Immediately after the explosion, a giant mushroom cloud rises above the destruction, like a demon sitting on a demonic throne. But in the hours that follow, a much deadlier cloud forms.
The fire that scorches cities, forests or fields heats up so much air that it creates its own microclimate and wind system. Hot air and smoke rise up, drawing in fresh air and oxygen from the surroundings, thus fanning the flames even more. This creates a huge pyrocumulonimbus cloud, carrying soot and aerosols from the flames into the stratosphere.
A Global Catastrophe: Nuclear Winter
In a full-scale nuclear war, the use of hundreds of nuclear weapons could send up to 150 million tons of soot into the stratosphere. Within days and weeks, the soot would cover the Earth at high altitudes, blocking sunlight reaching its surface. This is not the darkening of the sky and the disappearance of the sun like in science fiction movies, but less sunlight reaches the Earth's surface and nuclear winter begins.
Starvation-inducing Winter
How bad the nuclear winter will be is still a topic of active research. It all depends on how many things will burn and how many firestorms the explosions will create. Nuclear winter is a temporary state and not an ice age. But it rapidly disrupts our climate system and no living thing can adapt so quickly. In the new climate, the seasons are wrong: Winters are too long and summers are short and cold.
The Collapse of Agriculture and the Danger to Humanity
If agricultural production collapses, the world's food producers are likely to raise prices or stop selling to other countries. When oil refineries, ports and other basic infrastructure are destroyed, it becomes difficult for modern industrialized agriculture to continue.
Today, when making nuclear winter calculations, scientists are thinking about possible conflicts between India and Pakistan and between the US and Russia. Even low-yield weapons used in a conflict between India and Pakistan could lead to immediate deaths, killing millions of people. This could lead to a milder impact, called a 'nuclear fall', but even this could disrupt the climate and thus global agriculture sufficiently to cause 250 million people worldwide to starve to death.
If India and Pakistan's arms race continues and hundreds of nuclear weapons equipped with more powerful warheads are used, the resulting fires and explosions could kill hundreds of millions of people. A war on this scale would so disrupt global agriculture that it could halve the amount of calories available to humanity. The number of starving people could rise to 2 billion - one in every four people alive today.
The worst case scenario would be a global conflict between NATO countries and Russia or China. In such a war, thousands of nuclear weapons could be detonated. In this scenario, 360 million people would die instantly. There is no other event we can compare it to; it would be akin to humanity hitting itself with an asteroid. The ensuing nuclear winter could reduce humanity's food production by 90%. Agriculture would be immediately and fatally affected, while the climate would take at least a decade to recover.
Because this war hit particularly hard the regions of the world that produce food for the majority of humanity, recovery would be much more difficult than from other conflicts. Within two years, the global death toll from starvation could rise to nearly 5 billion. In countries in the mid-latitudes - Russia, China, Canada, the US and most of Europe - only a few percent of the population could survive.
Since the nuclear-armed states are all located in the northern hemisphere, some countries in the southern hemisphere - such as Australia, New Zealand and Argentina - could experience a milder nuclear winter and stop exporting food to feed their own populations. But they too risk being invaded by other starving nations.
The world can become an extremely harsh place for a long time, and by the end of the nuclear winter it is impossible to know how many people have died. In the worst case, human civilization could collapse and the survivors would slowly try to rebuild a world full of scars and graves. While building this new civilization, would humans build nuclear weapons again? It is certain that we must do everything in our power to ensure that nuclear war never happens.
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